


The Mathematics of Love

by SunAndMoon (LadyMorgaine)



Series: Skinship Collection [6]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-07 19:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15914973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMorgaine/pseuds/SunAndMoon
Summary: Things move too fast.





	1. Chapter 1

Kwon Soonyoung stared down at his laptop and the email in his business inbox. Over the years he had seen a lot of strange emails, some downright disgusting, but he had figured that that was the price you pay for running a dating and relationship column in the local newspaper. He had done his best to give good advice, even when his friends laughed at him for what he called a ‘career’. They had long since pointed out that he didn’t need to work, that the company he had inherited from his parents had made him one of the richest men in Seoul.

 

The problem was… the problem was. See, the problem was that he couldn’t abide being bored, and even though he had passed his business degrees and gotten his Masters in Data Analytics and Finance, he didn’t _love_ it. Not with the same burning passion he loved his little dance studio in Gangnam, or the advice column he ran in one of the newspapers under his company’s umbrella. He didn’t love it like he loved the feeling when someone wrote in to say that his advice had really helped the situation, or when they invited him to weddings, reconfirmation ceremonies, first year ceremonies and the like.

 

He never went. He couldn’t break his anonymity, but the letters still touched his too-vulnerable heart, just like this one did.

 

The outlines of it were sparse and business-like. If he had to concentrate on the language he’d say the person had had a good education, but it was the content that touched him. The person, who simply wished to be known as _Woozi_ , had written about how tired he felt of society’s expectations of him as a man, and how increasingly tired he was of the idea of romance. How it was down to a couple of badly-matched algorithms these days, and how much he disliked the transactional nature of it. How, despite abhorring it, he still made profile upon profile, only to cancel them immediately. He hadn’t asked for a reply; in fact, he hadn’t said anything in his letter that was even a clear question.

 

Kwon Soonyoung stared down at the letter and wondered what about it resonated so much with him. Inspired in that moment, he set his cup of coffee a little further away and typed out a reply directly, something he had rarely done before.

 

_Dear Woozi,_

_Your letter sounds as if you’re tired of the very idea of romance, let alone the mechanics behind it. Sometimes I am too. You find someone, you date, and it goes well for a while and then… and then it does not. You’re also right in that the world today treats the business of love like it’s a mathematical quantity: attraction + time spent minus the weight of indifference. You’d be correct, as the many dating sites out there can attest. The equations behind them aren’t quite that simple, but that’s what they boil down to._

_I’m tired too. Isn’t that such a bad confession for a romance columnist? Being vulnerable in today’s society is a bad idea, and the scars it often leaves is something to struggle with for years. The only advice I can give you, and I know you didn’t ask for any, is this: not every day is a good day, live anyway. Not all you love will love you back, love anyway. Not everyone will tell you the truth, be honest anyway. Not all deals are fair, play fair anyways._

_I have a degree in finance and data analytics. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that whilst you might find what you want on a dating site, it’s rather like winning a lottery. The odds of real love are as astronomical as you wish to make them, and not improved by advanced matching of interests or kinks. People dream of winning the lottery as much as they dream of winning real love. I wish I could chart a smooth course towards it for you, but that is beyond my talents as a columnist or a human being._

_The only person in the world that can make things simple again is the person with a practical time machine. That is the burden we have to bear as adults, and that is the one burden I hate._

_Thank you for writing this beautiful letter. It provoked me to think and confront some dark patches in myself._

_With great respect,_

_Hoshi._

He closed the laptop, feeling both drained and encouraged, and turned to struggle through the company’s books again. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for a fantastic VP in the form of Choi Seungcheol, he would long since have lost control of the company. He made a mental note to increase his bonus again this year and left his glittering apartment.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, when he once again went through the flood of e-mails to pick out a few ones that he wanted, he came across a name that looked familiar. His cursor hesitated above the ‘Woozi’ in the name field and he swallowed as he opened it.

 

_Dear Hoshi,_

_I never expected to get a letter back from you. Isn’t that odd? Surely you must think it strange to send such a letter off into the virtual stratosphere like a mediocre prayer. It seems as if bizarrely, the universe is in my favour this time. Where this luck is when I’m scrabbling to pay rent I don’t know._

_You are quite correct in that ‘simple’ isn’t an adult concept but humanity as a whole always longs for a simpler time. I think the man with the time machine would make a great deal of money, or at least be able to offer some pretty spectacular tours to fans of history. Who are we to say that the Hwarang really were as flower-like as people portrayed them? There might be an opportunity here._

_I digress. Your letter wasn’t what I’d expect from a columnist. No pat advice, no wordless assurance that there’s love waiting somewhere beyond the rainbow. I appreciate that. I can only hope that your dark patches leave you soon enough, though the chances of that are slim – astronomical even? I would insert a joke here about your pen-name, but my humour runs as dry as any number of well-known deserts._

_I am unable to thank you for the letter, and I am not a young girl showering money and presents on her idol. Instead, attached is a link to a song I wrote about the concept of simplicity._

_With respect_

_Woozi_

 

Soonyoung looked at the link at the bottom of the e-mail. There was enough fraud these day to choke on, so he carefully copied it out instead of just clicking on it, relieved when it took him to a private Google Drive account. He didn’t know what to expect, just stared at the buffering as it completed and hoped it didn’t wreck him.

 

He was wrong, _so_ wrong. The singer was a young man with a light and somewhat breathy tenor, but his voice had an aching purity he couldn’t recall in many other singers, and where the letter had been mere sparks of emotions ruthlessly pinned down, the emotion in the song came through clearly. It sounded professionally arranged, perfectly composed, and it rent his heart in two. He had tears in his eyes before he understood that he had them, and at the end he caught himself dashing away water at a frantic page. He had always considered himself cheerful, but this hit him like a two-by-four.

 

Here was someone that had the courage to share a piece of his soul with a total stranger, something Soonyoung hadn’t been able to do in a long long time. Firming his jaw, he closed his laptop and went to grab his keys, suddenly desperate to get to the studio and dance.

 

* * *

 

Across town, a lonely young man sat down at a PC-bang, sipping a cup of convenience store coffee as he scrolled through his mails. They were the usual: ads he didn’t want, carefully worded decline letters for music he felt compelled to try and sell, the very rare message from a friend. He almost closed out of the program before he saw it and sat back to read.

 

_Dear Woozi,_

_I find myself uncomfortable relaying to you the depths of my experience when I played that song. I am no musician to wax knowledgeably about pitch and timbre, or to even guess at the key this is in. Equally, I find myself incapable of stringing together words to let you know what I wish to say, so I’ve decided to respond in kind. I hope this finds you well, and I hope that it pleases you._

_With profound respect_

_Hoshi_

 

Confused, he clicked on the link at the bottom and watched the video that played. A small dance studio appeared, with the lights dimmed down. There was a man’s form silhouetted against the mirrors, though his face was in darkness. He noted the details of the body: slim but powerful, taller than himself by some measure. Graceful, though the way the man stood made him think there was hidden fire in his soul somewhere.

 

He nearly choked on his coffee when ‘Simple’ began rippling through the studio and the man danced. His movements reminded Woozi of coloured inks in water, ceaseless and alluring. It pulled him in, provided a unique lens on his song through another’s mind, and what he saw was beautiful. Each movement was precisely calculated and strong but filled with the kind of passion he only injected into his music, and briefly he wondered whether it was possible to hear a heart breaking. His was aching as if dealt some mortal blow, and suddenly the coffee tasted like dirt in his mouth.

 

He had shared a part of his soul and received another piece in return, and the warmth of it made him want to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

Time passed for both, not gracefully but limping as if dealt a mortal wound. Days refused to glide easily into nights, weeks into weekends. One had too much money, the other too little. They came to the table from opposite sides of the spectrum, with only one thing to unite them. Emails started to trickle between them like a river fed by mountain run-off, slow at first, then accelerating to a galloping pace.

 

It was the only fast thing in their lives by the end of two weeks, the daily reminder that someone saw them not as a gossip columnist or a struggling songwriter, but as people. Hoshi, feeling fanciful, printed out a couple of Woozi’s very dry letters to keep in his flat, saving the other carefully in an archive. In a way, reading them was like dancing – slow, stateful, but with a hint of something wilder under the surface.

 

Woozi would never admit to keeping Hoshi’s letters, but sometimes deep in the night when he couldn’t think anymore, he read them over from the start, trying to find encouragement from the meted, beautiful syllables. Sometimes they plodded along with his thoughts. Sometimes they ran away like a high-strung, excited horse. The subtext was simple: _I’m here, I’m listening; I derive value from knowing you._

 

Slowly, very slowly, they became less about a shelter in a stormy port, but a collection of daily thoughts. A snippet of poetry that Hoshi liked, a song recommendation from Woozi. A lament about the weather, a discussing on the possible disarmament of the country’s northern border now that North and South Korea were  talking. Once there was even a spirited discussion on the best dive bars to get a beer in.

 

There was one topic they never touched on after that first couple of exchanges: love. Somehow, unspoken, the topic had become fallow ground, left to see if something would heal. Sometimes Woozi touched upon one of the replies he read in the column, suggesting a different tack. Sometimes a love song slipped into the mix, or a photo with a stirring quote, but consciously the topic was taboo.

 

Hoshi was content to remain like that, if not for one nagging issue: between the lines and structures of Woozi’s paragraphs he could read an increasing kind of disappointment with life. Some one-night stands, but then the false too-cheerful letter the next day. The letters that rounded out the last of the three months they had been in contact were short, almost guttural, and he thought back to the start. Little clues that escaped his mind then, but that spoke to him like an autumn wind howling in an empty building now.

 

The capstone on that suspicion was the letter in front of him, sent a half-hour ago from an SNS account he didn’t know:

 

 _Hoshi_ ,

 

_Our acquaintance has been fulfilling, and I thank you for our conversations. Unfortunately I won’t be able to continue them; as you can imagine PC access is a luxury, and not one I intend to keep if I want to survive the next few months intact. Perhaps there was something to the counselling business after all. Treat your future clients as kindly as you treated me, and I have no doubts you will have a long-running, happy column._

_With great respect,_

_Woozi_

He thought of the amount of money around in his ‘pocket money’ account as Seungcheol-hyung called it, and bit his lip. A struggling songwriter in Seoul weather, caught between bills and rent to the extent that he didn’t have data access? Poverty had been a theoretical concept to him before, but this changed that somehow, and he hated himself for being that shallow. The Kwon _chaebol_ donated millions of won every year to a number of charities, but he had done little about the subject himself.

 

His lip escaped bleeding by narrow margins as he turned, mind made up in one of the leaps it sometimes did, and he pulled out his phone to dial his hyung. “Hyung,” he tried to say calmly as he answered. “Forgive me for this question, but have we donated to any poverty relief outreach programmes recently?”

 

“Several. The latest one was in June, for a couple of orphanages. Why?”

 

“Can you make out a donation to the halfway homes in the city?” Hoshi asked instead. “I don’t know how many there are, but at least a hundred blankets, food money for the winter, so on.”

 

Seungcheol sighed. “Soonyoung-ah, I’m not going to warn you about the money spent, because quite frankly you have enough for fifty lifetimes and that’s without the company. Instead, I’m going to ask ‘why’ again. This time I’d like an answer.”

 

Soonyoung stood to wander to the large window in front of him. “There’s a friend of mine that’s suffering, and it made me think. Made me wonder how many others are in his position. He didn’t ask for money if you’re worried. Hyung…” He broke off, searching for a way to respond.

 

“What you do with your money is your own thing,” Seungcheol said. “Just as long as you realise I’ll look after you like your parents wanted. What is it?”

 

Another bite to his lip, then a pout. “Is there a way to track someone down very quickly with nothing more than a producing name and some SNS accounts?”

 

“You don’t know who he is?” Now doubt crept into Seungcheol’s voice.

 

Soonyoung stared at his reflection in the window, wondering why his eyes looked sad and his mouth drooping. “I don’t know his name, but I know him,” he finally whispered. “Hyung, please help me? Trust my gut?”

 

A long sigh came. “Send me what you have. It’s time-sensitive, I take it?”

 

“Yes! Thank you, hyung.”

 

Nothing more, just a click, but he felt obscurely cheered as he sent everything he had on Woozi: emails, the song, the SNS accounts, the writer’s name he used, and went to dance his demons out. Five hours later, a single text crept across his phone:

 

_His name is Lee Jihoon. Find attached phone number and last address on record. Don’t disappoint me, Soonyoung-ah. I had to ask a very expensive friend a very expensive question for this information._

Looking at the address, he winced. It was in one of the smaller streets of Itaewon, outside of the glitzy main streets with the clubs; whilst Seoul had no ghettos per se, he had seen the area before, and the apartments were tiny and cheap, the kind of thing even a student should be able to afford. He looked down at himself, merely plucked on a sweatshirt and made for a taxi on the spur of the moment. Half an hour later, he stood in front of an apartment building that had nothing to recommend it beyond water stains on the walls and paper-thin walls.

 

He ignored the elevator, doubtful that it even worked. Instead, he ran up the stairs to the fifteenth floor and made his way down the long corridor to and open door. There was a chary collection of belongings in boxes around it, mismatched but neatly packed. From inside, a conversation between a familiar light tenor and an older woman, acrimonious at least on her side.

 

He stood and listened to her revile the man, harping on his inability to pay rent and telling him that it was his own fault for… not being enough? Rich enough, parsimonious enough, a lot of not-enoughs.

 

For the rest of his life he would remember the look on the man’s face as he carried one last box out. Lee Jihoon was scrawny, almost small enough to tuck under his chin. Old clothes, but clearly cared for. His expression was white with… with _something_ Soonyoung couldn’t identify. Instead of trying, he stood sideways as the woman locked the door and stormed past him, and looked at the way Lee Jihoon set down his last box and sunk down next to the wall himself.

 

One step, two; he didn’t look up even when Soonyoung stopped in front of him.

 

“Tell me,” he prompted quietly, “whether you still believe in the mathematics of love.”

 

It was another thing he would never forget as Lee Jihoon looked up at him with small, wide eyes. They were filled with smashed pride and vulnerability, and then the flash-fire of hope and recognition. He said nothing, just looked at Soonyoung with those wide, frightened eyes; the naked emotion in them, the remnants of self-confidence and ego and anger had died out to frustrated ashes.

 

“Will you let me make it simple for you?” he asked, hunkering down so that they were more or less on the same height, as if talking to a child.

 

It was the third thing he would never forget: the way Lee Jihoon’s small face screwed up as he hit rock bottom and cast his lot in with a virtual stranger.

 

“No,” Lee Jihoon said softly. And then, even softer, “Yes.”


	3. Chapter 3

The road back to Soonyoung’s apartment went very, very quietly. They had stayed until a moving company came to take the boxes, and though Jihoon had accepted a cup of very strong coffee between trembling hands, he hadn’t said much. This was worse, this uncomfortable glide back to Hannam-dong, and from the corner of his eye he watched the small, white face beside him as the car surged through the security checkpoint at The Hill. It took them to the foot of the small apartment building, and he stepped out into a cooling autumn afternoon.

 

Still more silence as they made their way to the apartment, and when the door closed behind them with a soft click, he reached to massage the back of his neck. Everything was the kind of spotless that his cleaning staff left it as, all save the little island of humanity at his kitchen island, that and the royal mess of his shoe closet. “Um, sorry. I’ve not had time to, uh, pack things away,” he babbled, scooting some of his shoes out of the way with a nervous foot. “You can have any bedroom you want. They all have bathrooms.”

 

“Thank you.” Jihoon didn’t say much more, and didn’t seem equal to the task of walking; it was only when Soonyoung pointed in the direction of the bedroom corridor that he scooted forward.

 

“I’ll get you some clothes and make you some ramen!” Soonyoung called after him. The smaller man left with no comment on that, and he was surprised to feel his hand shaking as he went to make the ramen, pulling out two of the three largest cups he had in the pantry. Knowing that the gate guards would take care of the movers, he fiddled nervously with the mess around his laptop, then went to go and get some clothes. Sweaters, sweatpants, socks, underwear – it felt strange to hear noise in the apartment that he wasn’t causing, and he skittered out of the second bedroom quickly, trying not to feel invaded.

 

 _You invited the man,_ his mind castigated. _And now you’re feeling odd because he’s in your home?_

 

The water boiled and the kettle clicked off. The shower continued. The water boiled again five minutes later. More showering. More boiling of water.

 

Thirty minutes later a mouse-creak of sound came, and he finally flicked the kettle on for the last time before he filled two of the three cups. Jihoon slunk up to the kitchen area like a stray cat, nervous and prone to skittering. It didn’t get better when he passed over a set of chopsticks, though he got a soft thank you again. They ate just like that, leaning on the island. He was surprised at the way Jihoon hoovered through the two cups, and eventually pushed half his own over as well.

 

The food gave the smaller man a bit of courage to speak. “Am I going to… going to sleep in your bedroom?”

 

It took a moment for Soonyoung’s mind to catch up to that. He felt startled in the worst way, filled with nausea that such a brilliant person would suspect he’d only been rescued to provide some kind of … kind of… bedroom services. Even that sounded prissy, but he was horrified enough that the chopsticks fell out of his nerveless fingers. “What?” he asked incredulously. “No, you’re not here for anything like that, Jihoon-ah. This isn’t… this isn’t that kind of situation.”

 

“Then what kind of a situation is it?” That sounded reserved, but infused with a little bite, and Jihoon stared at him as he asked it.

 

Soonyoung shrugged wearily. “We’re friends. Just… pick a bedroom and hang out. Take a few days. I’m going to take an early night, I have to be up for a 6AM class tomorrow.” Feeling defeated and unwilling to push it, he gestured behind him to the stocked pantry. “Take whatever you want.”

 

* * *

 

His guest wasn’t awake when he left the next morning, but he came home to the sound of someone on the piano that had stood in his lounge since he had moved in. Having never touched it, it was strange hearing the limpid progression of notes tickled from it, but they matched the rain outside with the way they cascaded so gently. He didn’t have the ear to know whose melody it was. Instead, plastic bag biting into his fingers, he idled over to peer inside the grand, fascinated with the way the hammers struck the strings. Every now and then something sounded just a little off. Each time that happened Jihoon’s body shivered a little.

 

“You haven’t kept her in tune,” Jihoon said, voice just a little stern. “And she shouldn’t be so near the window, you have a ventilation vent just over there. Changes in temperature aren’t good for instruments.”

 

Soonyoung gave him an ashamed smile. “I didn’t know.” He made to place a takeaway Americano on the seat next to the younger man, reconsidering when he got a side-eye. Instead, sighing, he put it back into the holder and tugged his sweater off easily, sacrificing it as an ersatz coaster before trying again. No comment, no eyeing the second time. “I guess the designer felt the space needed a piano. Can you, um, retune it?”

 

Jihoon shook his head. “I don’t have the equipment that I need for it. I can do it by ear, but even then I have to have something to adjust the strings with, and I’m not going to attack a Steinway with a normal socket wrench or a pair of pliers.”

 

That tickled Soonyoung’s fancy. “You can do it with a pair of pliers?” he murmured, leaning one elbow on the open side’s edge, somehow vastly amused. “I’m sure the handyman here has a pair. Needle-nosed or slip-joint?” The discreetly irritated, horrified look Jihoon gave him only made him more amused, though he was careful to hide it behind his hand. “You should drink your coffee whilst it’s hot. Americano, single origin, three sugars, right?”

 

Jihoon blinked at him. “How…”

 

“Three weeks ago, you informed me that the only acceptable coffee in the city is sold at Boma,” Soonyoung said easily. “You were complaining about supermarket coffee. The barista remembered you when I described you. Is it wrong?”

 

Jihoon looked away from him, reaching out gingerly to the coffee. “No,” he got out uncomfortably. “It’s correct. I’m just not used to anyone remembering what I tell them.”

 

The sadness in the statement wrenched at Soonyoung’s heart. Giving up for the moment, he went to get a chair instead, taking his time about it. When he returned, perching next to the piano stool, he cleared his throat. “You can’t abide being idle,” he said quietly, fingers curling around the rim of the chair between his legs. “And you’re a proud man, Lee Jihoon-ssi. I wanted to say this last night, but we were both worn to the quick. I didn’t invite you here for some kind of sugar daddy deal. Frankly, the idea is abhorrent.”

 

“Is it?” Jihoon said quietly, music starting again. “I suppose your standards are higher by far than myself, even if I had been female. Wrong side of the city and all that.”

 

Soonyoung managed a snort. “If you think it matters to me what gender you identify as, you’ve obviously not read as much of my column as you claimed to. Paying for love and affection… how is that different from the websites that you claim to hate? It’s the transactional nature that offends me, not your gender or your birth status. I’ve known a great many stupid, venal people born in palaces. I have no idea where you were born even, but I know you’re intelligent and erudite.”

 

Jihoon’s hands made the paper cup tremble a little. “Then why?” he asked plaintively. “I lay awake last night trying to understand. I can’t make it align in my head at all.”

 

“Because I can,” Soonyoung said softly. “You’re not charity. I can offer you a post here if you wish it. If that’ll make you feel better. But the man I got to know through all those e-mails, I want to know him a little better. I want to point at you one day and say ‘Do you see that guy? I knew him before he was famous.’ I just want something that isn’t mathematical, where there has to be some deeper meaning to balance out whatever altruistic impulses I have. Won’t you just let me be kind?”

 

Jihoon’s head drooped further, eyes hiding behind a too-long fringe. “Just as an exercise in kindness?” he murmured, voice hoarse.

 

Soonyoung gave another sigh and reached out to hesitantly tilt his head up with fingertips underneath his chin. “No,” he said again. “Because Lee Jihoon is a worthy, proud man, even if he doesn’t understand what I’m getting at.” His hand fell away seconds before Jihoon jerked his chin away. “Do you want to come shopping with me? Otherwise we’re going to have to eat fast food for the foreseeable future. Whatever I still have in the fridge is likely expired already.”

 

Muffling emotion behind a snort, Jihoon cleared his throat. “The cheese almost attacked me today when I opened the fridge,” he murmured, trying to break the atmosphere. “And the takeout boxes are about to mount a rebellion and invade the freezer section. I’m not good at cleaning, but I had to throw some of the stuff out. It was turning me into a germophobe just thinking about it. I tried to hook up your audio-visual system as well, but the TV is five years out of date and your surround sound’s fried.”

 

“It is? I mean, they are?” Soonyoung said as he stood. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I usually just use my little portable Bluetooth speaker if I want to listen to music. It’s reliable as long as I keep it charged. Will you help me? I know nothing about that kind of thing. I wouldn’t even know where to start.” He brightened. “Can you look after that kind of thing for me? I can give you a budget and you can be my, um, checker-of-things.”

 

“Is ‘checker-of-things’ your way of saying babysitter, Kwon Soonyoung-ssi?” Jihoon asked as he spun away from the piano. “Do you want me to burp you and tell you to wash behind your ears as well?” He paused. “You can call me Jihoon if you wish.”

 

Soonyoung laughed, feeling fey. “You’re so mean, Jihoon-ah. Come on, say yes.”

 

Jihoon looked up at him, obviously irritated and just as obviously amused. “Sure,” he finally muttered. “Babysitter to the rich and famous. Why not.”

 

“Great!” Soonyoung yelled. “Then we’re going out. You’ll need your own laptop, I can get you the WiFi password and there’s bound to be a place that, um, sells televisions somewhere. And lunch, and then some clothes, and I can get you another data contract, and we can open your salary account, and get that piano-tuning person, and some equipment for you…”

 

Jihoon stared at the ball of sudden energy, and got bundled in a sweater and had shoes carted over before he could object.

 

* * *

 

Five hours later, with a new gaming laptop that cost as much as a year’s rent at his previous place and a new phone that could possibly dial Saturn if required, Jihoon didn’t know whether to sulk or glow. Shopping with Kwon Soonyoung was like trying to shop with a force of nature. He paid for everything with the kind of panache of a person that had never had to worry about money in their life. ‘Only the best for you, Jihoon-ah!’ came up so frequently it still rang in his ears. Somehow, _somehow_ that had extended to a shopping experience at Gucci, where he was not only snowed down under clothes, but stood on a small bench for an hour to be measured to get everything adjusted to fit.

 

Right now, wrapped in the softest, downiest coat of his life, he hid as much of his face as he could behind the high collar, alternately fuming and shy. It wasn’t the worst day of his life, far from it, but even his crankiness couldn’t stand against Soonyoung’s cheer. It was like the down of his coat, and he cursed himself for being a weak man.

 

Not paying attention, he somehow got a data contract tucked into his pocket as well, and when Soonyoung gravitated towards an electronics shop he had to intervene. “Stop,” he called, wrapping one small hand into his employer’s sleeve. “No more. You can’t just buy that kind of thing on a whim. I want to go back to the apartment and look this up instead, and pro-con it. Same with your sound system. I can contact the university to get the name of a professional tuner as well. All I need is…”

 

“Salary!” Soonyoung said excitedly, and rushed off like a beagle into the nearest bank.

 

Jihoon felt like crying. There was no sign of the educated, dry-humoured gentleman behind the posts at the moment, only an over-active puppy that he wanted to guide away from fascinating trees. He barely managed to catch his new boss, dragging him back out. “I have an account,” he hissed. “It’s empty, but we can use that. I _have_ a debit card. I even have a public transportation card. Can we just… not, please? I’m hungry, my feet are sore and I really just want to sit down.”

 

Soonyoung pulled himself up short, looking down at Jihoon. There was a channel carved by tension between his brows; whilst he didn’t look actively angry he didn’t look happy either. “Sure,” he said simply. “Take-away? There are probably places that do fresh food delivery too. But there is one place I still need to go.” He looked around, leaned to see the street name and nodded. “This way.”

 

Walking the five blocks felt like forever to Jihoon, and he barely had a moment to catch his breath before Soonyoung nudged him into a building, wandering in like he owned it.

 

 _Correction,_ Jihoon thought sourly. _He probably does own it._

It was light and airy inside, at least on the first floor, and he could dimly hear different strains of music. In one corner, with a perfect view of the street albeit one that could be shut off by curtains, was a room circled by mirrors and plain polished wooden flooring. It wasn’t very big, but its feel…

 

“This is your studio,” he hazarded a guess, looking around to confirm with his memory. “It’s the one where you filmed the choreography that you made for ‘Simple’.” The thought felt like a knife in his chest, cutting, but with it came a little looseness, a chance to breathe more deeply. He remembered that moment, watching Kwon Soonyoung dance on the PC-bang’s screen. Even now, with evening falling and making it a wet autumn dusk, he could still feel it. The spirit in the room, soaked in by hours of a sun dancing in it.

 

Soonyoung smiled at him but didn’t say anything. “Here,” he offered, leading the way to a door off to the side. It opened to reveal what looked like a small office space, empty beyond a desk and a thin layer of flyers, free products and a bag of dry cat food. Stepping inside, he made a nervous motion of stacking the papers together, scooting the free pack of toilet paper off towards the side. “I thought if you wanted to, you could make this a tiny studio. It’s very small, I know, but it’s private and the door is soundproof. The walls too.” So speaking, he reached out to the foam padding on the walls, pressing a few rounded pyramids flat.

 

Jihoon watched him play with the padding and stuck his hands into his pockets. It cost effort to look away from Soonyoung’s hopeful look. “Let me think about it,” he said finally. “Can I give you an answer tomorrow?”

 

Soonyoung, perhaps noticing his fatigue, nodded. “Food?” he suggested kindly. “Perhaps it’ll let you sleep a bit better tonight.”

 

Conversation fell quiet, but Jihoon felt a little better about things. He spent the trip to the ludicrously expensive apartment setting up his new space phone, activating the data contract and looking out the window. Twenty-four hours earlier he had been destitute. Now… well, he didn’t know about now, but he had food and a good roof over his head and…

 

Jihoon’s brains froze as his thumb stilled on the banking app. He had wanted to see whether he still had a few dollars left over, at least enough for public transportation to get things for his new job. Instead, there was a little over seventy-six million won in it, the largest amount he had ever seen. “What… what have you done?” he managed to choke out. “Did you put this in here?”

 

Blinking, Soonyoung leant over to his side. “Yes?” he asked, voice heavy with confusion. “When I asked Seungcheol-hyung what one of our office managers get per year, he said it was around that much. There’ll still be bonuses and so on? It’s getting laid out in a contract. If it’s not enough we can talk?”

 

Lee Jihoon officially shut down for the last time that day, managing a shake of his head and a pained grunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. Things move too fast. 
> 



End file.
